The alcohol has been blocking REM sleep so long, and the pressure for deep sleep has built up so much, it has spilled over into wakefulness. You essentially dream while you’re awake.

Dreams

When we dream, we essentially become psychotic – we see things that aren’t there (hallucination), we believe things that couldn’t possibly be true (delusion), we have wildly fluctuating emotions, and we become confused about time/place

In REM sleep, some parts of the brain become 30% more active compared to when awake

Parts of the brain regulating emotion ramp up, same with visual and motor parts of the brain

However, the prefrontal cortex (associated with rational thinking) gets shut off

So really, in dreams, there’s no “controller” or “driver”

Why do we forget dreams?

One theory of dreaming, is that it’s a reconstruction of fragments, and our cortex packages everything together and makes a good story – Matthew doesn’t really agree with this

Warm your hands and your feet to move the blood away from your core out to the surface

Matthew recommends either going to sleep with socks and gloves on, or taking a warm bath right before bed

With a warm bath, you get vasodilation (rosy cheeks, red skin) and all of the blood rushes to the surface – when you get out, you have a massive dump of heat from the body, and the core body temp. plummets

Sleep and Diet

“Don’t go to bed too full, and don’t go to bed too hungry”

Diets high in sugar and low in fiber tend not to be good for sleep – results in less deep sleep and your sleep ends up being more fragmented

Supplements

Melatonin is useful when traveling between time zones – it fools your brain into thinking it’s time to go to bed

Once you’re stable in a new time zone, melatonin doesn’t seem to be advantageous towards sleep – it’s much more of a placebo effect

However, if you’re taking it, and think it works – it won’t hurt, keep taking it

As we age, our circadian rythm starts to get blunted – this is where nightly use of melatonin has been shown to be beneficial

Sleep and Evolution

Hunter gather tribes tended to go to sleep 2 hours after dusk when the climate temperature started to drop

They also got up about 30 or so minutes before dawn – due to the rise in temperature

Midnight should actually be the middle of the night, and now midnight has become the time where we check Facebook

Maybe we should be sleeping biphasically?

People think the post-prandial dip (around 2-4pm) is dependent on diet, but it’s not true according to Dr. Walker

Even people who abstain from lunch will have a drop in physiological alertness during this period

“It’s a genetically hardwired preprogrammed drop that suggests we should be sleeping biphassically”

The lull exists no matter what, even if you don’t think it happens to you

The Horrible Effects Caused by a Lack of Sleep – Part 2

During deep sleep at night, there is a sewage system in the brain that cleanses the brain of all the metabolic toxins that have accumulated throughout the day

One of those toxins is beta amyloid – which is responsible for the underlying mechahism of Alzheimer’s disease

The less you sleep – the more this plaque builds up

Insufficient sleeps is the most significant lifestyle factor for determining whether or not you’ll develop Alzheimer’s Disease

Insufficient sleep is linked to bowl, prostate, and breast cancer

The WHO has decided to classify any form of nighttime shift work as a probable carcinogen

Shift workers have higher rates obesity, diabetes, and cancer

Leptin and ghrelin

Both control appetite and weight

Leptin tells our brain we’re full

Ghrelin does the opposite, it’s the hunger hormone

With less sleep, leptin gets suppressed, and ghrelin gets ramped up

People sleeping 4-5 hours a night will on average eat 200-300 extra calories each day (this equates to 70,000 extra calories each year, which translates into 10-15 lbs. of extra body mass)

You also eat more of the wrong things

Lack of sleep is a critical factor of the obesity epidemic

1 out of every 2 adults in America are not getting the recommended 8 hours of sleep

1 out of 3 people are trying to survive on 6 hours or less of sleep

The average American adult is sleeping 6 hours and 31 minutes during the week (it used to be 7.9 hours in 1942)

“The number of people who can survive on 6 hours of sleep or less, rounded to a whole number, and expressed as a percentage of the population is 0”

“You don’t know you’re sleep deprived, when you’re sleep deprived”

Under slept employees will take on fewer work challenges, are more likely to slack off in groups, and are less likely to come up with creative solutions

Less sleep does not equal more productivity

Naps

We can’t use naps to regain sleep we’ve lost

“Sleep is not like a bank. We can’t accumulate a debt and hope to pay it off on the weekend”

Dr. Walker estimates that if you pull an all nighter, and then are allowed to sleep as long as you want the next night, you’ll sleep longer but you’ll only get back 3-4 hours of that lost total 8

Being able to store sleep would be useful evolutionary – just like we can store fat for times of famine

Why can’t we do this? – Humans beings are the only species that deprive themselves of sleep for no apparent reason. Mother nature has never faced the challenge of coming up with a safety net for lack of sleep

Lack of sleep is a recent occurrence – we can only force a species to sleep less when we starve them

This is why when fasting (for 2-3 days), people have bad sleep – it only makes you more hungry

When you’re starved – ghrelin levels are high, and this also boosts dopamine which keep you awake

We all have cancer cells within our body, and what really prevents the formation of full on cancer, are these natural killer cells

Daylight savings time

In the spring, when we lose an hour of sleep, we see a 24% increase in heart attacks

In the fall, when we gain an hour of sleep, there’s a 21% decrease in heart attacks

One study found that, with one week of 6 hours of sleep per night, 711 genes were distorted in their activity

Half of those genes experienced an increase in activity – these were genes related to the promotion of tumors, genes related to chronic inflammation, and genes associated with stress (and therefore cardiovascular disease)

Half of these genes were suppressed – many of these were genes related to immune response, so we become immune deficient with a lack of sleep

Many of the children diagnosed with ADHD are just under slept

A lack of sleep costs most nations about 2% of their GDP

In America – that’s $411 billion

Solve the sleep epidemic and you could double the budget for education and half the budget for healthcare

If you’re dieting, but not getting sufficient sleep, 70% of all the weight you lose will come from lean muscle, not fat – our body becomes resistant at giving up fat when it’s underslept

Supplements to deal with a lack of sleep

Caffeine can help you get over the basic reduction in alertness and can moderately improve response times

Modafinil – Works through the dopamine pathway (the pleasure pathway) – it raises dopamine to increase alertness

Sleep and Medicine

Most doctors only have about 2 hours of sleep education in their medical curriculum

Residents working a 30 hours shift are 460% more likely to make diagnostic errors in the intensive care unit, relative to when they’re working 16 hours

If you have surgery, you should ask your surgeon how much sleep they’ve had in the last 24 hours

If they’ve had 6 hours of sleep or less – you have a 170% increased risk of a major surgical error

1 in 5 medical residents will make an error due to insufficient sleep, 1 in 20 medical residents will kill a patient due to a fatigue related error

“The one place where you need a good night of sleep the most, in the hospital, is the one place you can’t get it”

Why don’t we get ear plugs and an eye mask, like we do when we fly, in the hospital?

To Sum Up

“Sleep is the elixir of life. It is the most widely available and democratic powerful healthcare system I could ever possibly imagine.”